


Sense is Senseless within the Grapevine of Sorrow

by turntochapter13



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: 3x15 ending, Angst, Barry Allen Has Issues, Barry Allen Needs a Hug, Barry Allen is not okay, Episode: s03e15 The Wrath of Savitar, Extended Scene, F/M, Hearing Voices, Hurt Barry Allen, No Beta, POV Barry Allen, Takes place after Wally is taken into speed force, The voice in Barry's head is not very kind, canon divergence kind of, everyone reacted to Barry in this episode, med lab scene, quick fic, sorry for so many tags ARGHHHHH, switched around how the scene went down, the tiniest bit so it would go in my story better, you can tell im a little salty about how
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-04 16:46:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17308181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turntochapter13/pseuds/turntochapter13
Summary: "But he couldn't shut it off, it kept on revving through his brain like an obnoxious motorcycle, accelerating it's engine over the muddy piles of mushed up brain that were left behind after his cognitive thought went down the drain once he screamed his lungs bloody, pushing through the impending wretched pain that accompanied yanking a blade out of bone."orBarry isn't exactly right in the head after he watched Wally get taken into the speed force by Savitar.





	Sense is Senseless within the Grapevine of Sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a quick little drabble I whipped up because I was bored, and I hit a sort of block while writing Tragedy's Favorite Toy.
> 
> Enjoy the read... but like don't enjoy his pain?....... I don't freaking know, just read it I guess,
> 
> Lili <3

He was screaming at them, at least he thought he was. He screamed over the already wretched bouts of agony from the  _ thing _ that had been lodged in his clavicle. He had screamed at Joe as he looked at Barry with that look, the look that said that Barry got his foster brother sucked into the abyss of the unknown and despair and that his foster  _ father  _ hated him for it, blamed him for it, shoved it in his face with the Kid Flash insignia printed brazenly over the scorched remains of Wally's suit. But how could he possibly blame the man. Look at what Barry did. Look at what Barry allowed to happen.

God, it  _ was  _ all Barry's fault.  _ Stop screaming. Stop screaming. Stop screaming. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. You don't deserve to be upset with Joe, upset with Joe after you, you unfathomable scum of a human, just stood there frozen when Wally was getting stretched and yanked and pulled into the speed force. You're pathetic. _

"Joe I'm sorry," he cried,  _ yeah like that means anything coming from you.  _ Joe got that message too. Sure, he said it wasn't his fault, but he didn't mean it, no he didn't. He walked away.

Caitlin, oh Caitlin, over there, with teary eyes of guilt when she had just done child's play pinned on a board next to his treachery. **_It wasn't your fault Caitlin. You had a monster inside you. You wanted it out. It's_** **okay** ** _to want to get the monster out, but with me, I'm the monster. I have no excuses_** _. No excuses. Just stood there and watched like the coward you are._

She said she was sorry too. She said she was afraid. Barry forgives her. Barry thinks everyone else does too, so why won't they forgive him-  _ BECAUSE YOU DON'T DESERVE FORGIVENESS YOU TRAITOR, FREEZING LIKE THAT, LIKE THE COWARD YOU ARE. THE ONLY THING CLOSE TO FORGIVENESS SUITABLE FOR YOU IS PENANCE. YOU SHOULD BE IN THE HOLE, NOT WALLY… you're pathetic. _

He wanted to reach out to her, hug her, _ but be careful, Barry. Everything you touch corrodes and dies, Daddy, Mommy, Eddie, Ronnie, Wally… you're pathetic.  _ He wanted to tell her it was okay, that she didn't do anything the rest of them wouldn't do if they were stuck in the same situation. She was so distressed. He wanted to comfort her, but his energy was slipping away so fast. He settled for a simple, "I know." because "Fear makes us do a lot of things."

Cisco and Julian and HR were just awkward as hell, they were just trying to get out as soon as possible. Barry could relate to that, but he was in the spotlight, dazzling lights of repudiated intolerance blinding him and sending his mind into convulsions of shame and regret, regret he could never find redemption for. Cisco wandered off with the blade in his hand, but Barry still felt it like a phantom reminder of what happened that night.  _ Never forget. Never forget.  _ Julian simply followed, and HR had went in search of Jesse. Jesse, Jesse should find some reconciliation, but what could Barry offer her but a chronic reminder of what happened to Wally.

They couldn't save him and that was plain simple. Wally was gone and the prophecy was true, just not in the way they all would've thought, of course that's how it would happen, because nothing ever went their way. Sure, their zany experiments to defeat the bad guy of the week worked out more than half the time, the patents and the affiliations made it easier to get by with life considering they all got the end of the stick when it came to their checks at the end of the month with their day-jobs, and they had optimism most of the time when it was needed, but when it was whittled down to the important things, carved and shaped into the core and what all mattered, everything became an utter disaster.

They all were flooding out, and with every extrication of human presence, something made his chest grow tighter, and his heart feel emptier, hollow, like one more feeble blow to it foundation would make it crumble and simply leave behind vacant eyes to refract only the faint shadow of what used to be. Here he was though, working out all the angst and foreboding like he was a victim--what kind of joke was that? 

 

But he couldn't shut it off, it kept on revving through his brain like an obnoxious motorcycle, accelerating it's engine over the muddy piles of mushed up brain that were left behind after his cognitive thought went down the drain once he screamed his lungs bloody, pushing through the impending wretched pain that accompanied yanking a blade out of bone.

But through all the stress and the adrenalin that was reverberating through him like wildfire, his inner turmoil being the convection that kept it rolling, nothing prepared him for seeing her right in front of him. He tried so hard to voice all he felt, because out of everyone here, she'd understand. She'd whisper assurances in his ear with her soothing voice as he rushed for apologies and all would be right, but Iris' face only portrayed pain, pain for the brother she lost, and he hated himself so much deeper in an instant. He hated that he put that look there.

His lips roved around vacant words, the pleading for understanding, pardon, going too silent to be heard. Her, with her watery eyes, and a permanent frown that he placed there, took his hand for the briefest of moment and everything felt just right until it didn't, and her delicate, soft skin skimmed over his hand for only seconds before dropping back off into the void where everything was blurred, and he was too capacitated to recollect what went on there, singularly grasping onto the slippery slope that was consciousness. Something new was still there though. Had Iris returned her hand, and Barry didn't even notice?

No, she was standing right there but blatantly avoiding his very touch. He moved his fingers around where the slightest heat from her hands had transferred, and it felt like the world fell out of it's rightful place, like nothing was right now because no, no, no, no-  _ It's about time she sees you for you and gives up on your sorry ass. Stop whining, and take it… you're pathetic. _

Barry caressed the metal in his fingers, over and over trying with all his might to find something, something else that it could be, but her face told it all, and it told him that he should just freaking leave Central City, because the last thing tying him to it, the thing, the person he thought would be there till the very end was throwing that idea right out the window, giving back the ring he worked more shifts than healthy to pay for, but who cared about the price tag when she purposely opposed his gaze as he looked up at her with watery eyes and a gargantuan  _ something  _ lodged in his throat.

She didn't even say anything before walking away, eyes enigmatic but clear on their intent to rip Barry's soul to shreds as the pull between them stretched farther and farther until it was out of sight, like the imaginary band that held a mass to it's orbit snapping under the abiding pressure, when it met it’s aphelion, and shooting the mass into the unknown. Barry couldn’t tell which one of them was the mass. He couldn’t tell because he was fighting so hard not to scream, so hard to plead for them all to come back.

When the door was closed and everyone was gone, everything around him was silent except for the increasing beat of his heart- _how was that still in tact by this point_ \- beeping on the monitor, he smacked his hand over his face as hard as he could, enjoying the radiating pain of it before doing it again then again just to settle the third time so it could hide his ugly face as he lets the heavy tears escape his eyes and the phlegm build up in his throat as he struggled to keep the noise inside and the guck stay in his nose even as with each breath it became more clogged. **_Come back, come back,_** he wanted to say, say he was so goddamn sorry he would jump off the New River Gorge Bridge if it satisfied them.

His other hand was setting to join the first as he ignored the pain that sent shivers through his shoulder and up his arm once it began to move, but after a second, he pulled it back out, satisfied with the pain and holding out his injured arm in front of him, twenty-degree-angle, just the right amount of pull to make it hurt so much he almost screamed, laughing it off was the only option, an uncontrollable force sending ripples of rueful laughter through his diaphragm to erupt suddenly in the open before being staved off by the small part of his mind that was still coherent and partially sane and knew that the joy of punishing himself was too destructive to think about for too long.

The conflict drew out for a long while as he just went back to suffocating the sorrowful sobs that were punching through his chest and up out of his mouth.

The leftist of his own his minds version of republic soon lost their battle, and his mind shifted into autopilot.

Time had gone past. Barry was sure of it, couldn’t care of it though. Maybe everyone left, maybe they didn't, he couldn’t pay a lot of mind to the thought while he wasn't solely working the controls that were moving his body out of the med lab and into the cortex. If they were still there, they most definitely saw him acting out considering the privacy of the med lab was barely existent, with only windows as a main separator, and the flimsy curtains had been drawn all the way in on themselves, but still he found that he couldn't care less.

Someone was still there. He could hear the muffled calls of his name in a questioning manner, sense the blurred silhouettes in his peripheral, but he walked past them until some force stopped him from going on. He looked up to see Joe with his brows scrunched up, saying something that Barry couldn't grasp onto, instead opting to just not try and understand it at all.

He just looked forward and hoped Joe would get out of his way eventually, and it came true after a few drawn out seconds of tension. He looked around reluctantly to see Iris, Caitlin, and Cisco all acting like they weren't looking at him sporadically despite their fidgety eyes roaming every moment or so to contrast their sudden love and adoration for staring at the floor. A complex dilemma was rolling continuously in his mind, wanting to scream and plead to them all for forgiveness but also shove himself in a box and ship it far away, to push himself into total isolation like he had done to Wally. Would one prove to help the other work?  _ Probably not… they'd say good riddance and find a way to get Wally back, then he could take over for you. He could actually save his sister. _

"Shut up."  **_Did I say that out loud?_ ** _ You probably did considering all the things you've made a mistake on already-  _ "Shut up!"

"Barry?" Barry shot his head up in the direction of Caitlin's voice. She sat behind the arch of computers with Cisco by her side, brazenly worried-  _ he's only worried about Caitlin. Other people are going through stuff Barry. It isn't all about you, get back into your bed and stay there so you can hash out your many problems by yourself.  _ "No one said anything." She continued with a slight quiver in her quiet, soft voice.  _ Now look what you did. She's actually scared of you-  _ "Barry?"

"I said shut up!"

Caitlin cringed backwards and Cisco got in front of her, worry gone and replaced by a brusk, unreadable itch in his clenched jaw. "She was only trying to tell you no one was talking, Barry. You don't have to say that to her."

Barry gulped down on his dry throat to no avail, "No I didn't- it was-" He shrunk down.  _ Yeah go ahead and tell them you were talking to the voice in your head- go ahead and tell them you're freaking looney. _

"Barry, you should really get back in bed." Joe laid a hand on his shoulder, Barry clenched up in order to not flinch so hard he jumped.

Everything was getting so confusing so quickly. He was working out that part of the reason he could barely see anything at all was because of the tears that were wavering on his bottom lids. His breath picked up and he turned from blurry figure to blurry figure in a frenzy as they all shifted in miniscule but apparent ways.

"I'm sorry," he whispered to no one in particular, repeating it just in case he had said it the first time in his head.

"I… It's okay Barr." Joe's muffled voice mitigated, voice coming through scratchy like an old radio.

"But it's- It's not. It's- I- I disappointed you all. I-"

"Barry, it wasn't your fault." Iris said, and he turned around, only to panic more at the fact that moisture had overtaken his whole vision, screwing it all to a messy, indescribable array of tableaus standing out weakly against the otherwise white of and gray of the walls.

Suddenly it was like all the breath was being ripped out of him for the umpteenth time today. He laughed at her. He laughs at the blur as it shifts from foot to foot, or hand to hand, handstand? He wouldn't be able to tell if he tried. He laughed at her because she was here, telling him it wasn't his fault while only a short while ago she walked away from him, just walked away when he had been retching over the need for her to stay at his side, just for a bit longer.

He laughed at Iris because it was the only thing that made sense since everything was closing in on him, and nothing else made a lick of sagacity other than the burning cigarette hole in his lungs that told him that everything that had happened was because of him, Iris was going to die because of him, and Wally was going to suffer because of him, because of him, him and his shell-shocked idiocy that just had to set in when someone needed him the most, trusted to him to the extent in which they thought Barry helping shouldn't've been a question until it was.

He laughed at Iris as the ring that had been clutched in his hand since she gave it to him left it's spot and dropped to the floor. He continued until he couldn't anymore and all that was left behind were the tears finally streaming down his cheeks and allowing him to see everyone cemented to their spots as they stared at him, wide eyed. 

 

He couldn't take it. He couldn't take it, so he felt the energy beginning to buzz, starting at the lower nerves and reaching further and further, transferring to his lymph nodes and them everywhere else.

He heard someone, or many someone's call out to his, but he couldn’t care as he ran away-  _ ran away because you couldn't handle any big boy problems.  _ He ran until he felt like his heart had given up miles ago and he was just an empty void and he felt like his clothes were going to give out too and set on fire from the speed, burning his skin-  _ would that really be that bad? _

  
  



End file.
